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JehovahGyra

Probably unanswerable tech. question

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I’ve never been able to get sound to work with Doom.exe or Boom.exe on my computer. Once, after searching for sound card values that were out of the setup.exe’s range and tweaking manually, I was able to get Doom.exe to play sound, but only after exiting to pure DOS, albeit often freezing up.

I had all but given up on this, but then today I noticed that a screensaver type program called ‘deskdoom’ plays full sound when I run it. Of course, this program exits as soon as any button is pressed. But it seems to be based wholly on the same version of Boom I’m running, right down to the exit message. This seems really weird to a dummy like me. I don’t guess there’s a way to keep deskdoom.exe from exiting when I press a button without changing the exe, because the cfg file for it is identical to that of Boom’s.

Are there any techy types around who might have a clue why the deskdoom incarnation of Boom will play sound while Boom.exe itself will not? Or maybe just plain tips on how to force Doom to work on newer soundcards (SB PCI512)? I always wanted to hone my skills in the original exe, but it’s just not worth it without sound.

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ZDoom plays sound perfectly, so I'd just go with that. Doom has wierd,
old, sound code that only worked properly on ancient computers with
old sound cards. You can try searching Google for 'VDMSound', which is
a virtual SB16 emulator, but it will not even come close to the quality
of old-fasioned Doom sound.

I have wanted to hear Memento Mori, Map 15's music in MUS format for a
long time. That music was so cool. :P

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I'd second VolteFace's suggestion to get zdoom. The latest beta 33 is in zdoom.notgod.com/ftp and it is Win32 code, written to work with Windows. As you noticed, the original doom.exe and doom2.exe had limited resources for sound cards in terms of valid IRQs. My Sound Blaster Live! card will support the DOS versions, but I have to run the sbeinit.exe (sound blaster emulation). There is also a "set blaster" environment variable which some games used to identify the sound card parameters, like SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
in your autoexec.bat file. Those numbers represent your card's settings such as port number, interrupt number, low DMA channel, high DMA channel, midi port (guessing) and card type and some games used them. I cannot remember if doom and doom2 used them, but most sound cards put this in your autoexec.bat when you installed their software.

You should be happier with zdoom (or some other ports) since you can use higher video resolutions and play numerous music formats including mp3 and mod.

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deskdoom is probably a win32 incarnation of boom.

i'm guessing your soundcard doesnt like to be friendly in old dos programs.

i reccomend you get a competent win32 doom port.

zdoom is good, as well as prboom, which is basically a continuation of boom.

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Check you MIDI synthesizer. If it's yamaha softsynth change it to something else (like default). That's what worked for me.

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I don't recommend screwing with SET BLASTER on your own; I stuck some
stuff in there (it was correct, I made sure) and it stopped my computer
from booting; my card isn't too friendly with DOS.

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Doom uses IRQ values to the maximum #7, check in my computer>control panel>system>device manager>sound video game controllers, make sure sound card IRQ is no higher than #7, or if you have the option, check it's "DOS emulation" is set with IRQ no higher than 7

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VolteFace said:

I don't recommend screwing with SET BLASTER on your own; I stuck some
stuff in there (it was correct, I made sure) and it stopped my computer
from booting; my card isn't too friendly with DOS.


you did it wrong, or you did it on a non soundblaster compatible card.

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Thanks for the various advice.

As far as the suggestions to use ZDoom, I do have Zdoom. I am the guy who made A Warm Place.
Does anyone remember? It was like the ZDoomyest Zdoom Mod ever. Where are the 672 people who downloaded that thing?

Like I said, my desire to play the original Doom more thoroughly was purley a purist desire. It's not that I don't have or like the new source ports. Zdoom is my favorite too.

Well, thanks for the clues.

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There are several source ports available for Doom, if you can't get the original .exe to run the way you want.

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